The Global Traffic Director (GTD) allows you to specify different zone files in five regions of the world. Querying clients in each region will resolve the domain name based on only that region’s zone file. This becomes useful if you have servers in different regions of the world that host content for your domain. GTD speeds up response times because querying clients are sent to the closest name server to their location.

Please note, the following example uses a hypothetical infrastructure scenario and should only be used as a guide for how to apply a GTD configuration in a specific case.

1. Select Managed DNS in the sidebar menu, and click on Domains from the drop down list.

2. Select a domain with GTD currently enabled. You can learn how to enable GTD in a separate tutorial.

3. In this tutorial we will show you how setup GTD with your records. Two web servers will be used, one in China at 192.168.0.1 and one in New York in the USA at 192.168.1.1. Our goal is to setup GTD so that US based clients will arrive at the US web server, while clients in Asia will resolve their queries at a web server in China.

Our first server will be the US based server which is on the East Coast. Select the US East tab, and then click the button under the A Record section.

4. Now you will configure your GTD records:

A) Name: Use an identifiable name to label your record.B) TTL: Modify the default TTL (Time to Live) if necessary.C) IP: Enter the IP address, in this example we will use the address of our East Coast server which is 192.168.1.1.D) Notes: If you want to, you can add a helpful note here.E) Saves and Close: Don’t forget to commit your changes.

5. Now we will create the record for Asia the same way we created the record for US East. First, click on the Asia Pac tab and then click on the icon under the A Records section.

6. Now you will configure your GTD records just like what we did before, but for the China server:

A) Name: Use an identifiable name to label your record.B) TTL: Modify the default TTL (Time to Live) if necessary.C) IP: Enter the IP address, in this example we will use the address of our East Coast server which is 192.168.1.1.D) Notes: If you want to, you can add a helpful note here.E) Saves and Close: Don’t forget to commit your changes.

7. At this point, no other regions are defined, so www.example2.com will only resolve in the US-East and Asia-Pac regions. All other regions will not resolve as no record exists. To fix this, either create a record for the Default region, or create records specifically defined for each additional region.

Based on this example, it would make sense for the Oceania region to have the same IP address as the Asia-Pac region. It would also make sense for the US-West region to have the same IP address as the US-East region. The Europe region is likely closer geographically to the Asia region in most cases, so it will also have the Asia-Pac IP. The Europe and Oceania regions will have the same IP, those can be defined with a Default record.